Getting started

Key topics:

What is Figshare?
How to sign up for a free Figshare account
How using Figshare will help your research
Best practice for managing your outputs on Figshare
Is uploading research onto Figshare considered pre-publication?

What is Figshare?

Figshare is a web-based interface designed for academic research data management and research data dissemination. It accepts all file types (with in-browser viewing for over 1,200 file extensions).

Figshare was originally created as a solution to keep research outputs in one tidy place whilst allowing it to be discovered by like minded individuals: the academic community. It quickly became apparent that others sought such a resource and Figshare opened its doors. Figshare enables academics to upload, share, cite and importantly discover all manner of research outputs with the security of knowing our hosting options and platform support long term preservation of data.

Along the way, we have developed offerings not just for the individual (figshare.com) but for organizations.

Our mission

At Figshare, we have a vision to change the face of academic publishing with the improved dissemination and discoverability of all scholarly research and content. Figshare strives to make use of new technologies such as cloud hosting, RESTful APIs, and browser functionality to better aid researchers, publishers, and institutions in their attempts to better manage and disseminate academic research. The Figshare team believes firmly in the power of open access to knowledge.

Find out more about us and our work.

How do I get started?

View our partners section to see if your institution already has a Figshare repository.

Otherwise, in order to start uploading you’ll need to sign up.

At a high level, it is as easy as:

Sign up for a free account
Create a new item in your account
Add files (optional) and add information to describe your research (metadata – this is incredibly important)
Click ‘Publish’
Your item will be made public with a DOI immediately. It will be discoverable to the world and others can cite your work.

How do I contact Figshare?

Whether you need support, want to provide feedback or just want to say hello please get in contact via: a support ticket, or email directly at support@figshare.com or X.

We will endeavour to respond to your queries within 48 hours.

How to sign up for a Figshare account

If you are using Figshare as an individual and not through your institution:

Abiding by the Terms and Conditions, any individual with an email address can create an account on Figshare. The only other information required is a last name. Go to https://figshare.com and click ‘Sign up’ in the upper right section of the page.

You will need to enter a few details and accept the Terms & Conditions. From then on you will just need to use the Log in button.

If you are using Figshare through your institution:

Most institutions have single sign on (SSO) enabled which means there is no need to sign up, just go to your institution’s repository home page and click ‘Log in’ in the upper right. Alternatively, you can search for your institution here: https://figshare.com/account/login/institution.

If you are unsure please contact your administrator (typically this would be someone in your Library or Research office.

Shared accounts at institutions

In most cases, you will need to use your institutional staff/student credentials (combination of username and password) to log into Figshare via your SSO.

However, if you are using a shared account (not affiliated with your institutional SSO), or if you have been provided with a separate manual account to log into the institutional Figshare portal, you will not be able to log in via the SSO. To bypass SSO and log in successfully:

Navigate to your portal page and add /account/login to the end of your institutional Figshare URL. The url will look like https://institution.figshare.com/account/login

Example: La Trobe University’s Figshare portal is located at: https://latrobe.figshare.com/

To bypass SSO and log in with a manual / shared account, you will need to go to: https://latrobe.figshare.com/account/login

How can Figshare help my research?

Sharing research data on Figshare can help promote your research and raise your profile as a researcher. It has also been reported that, ‘sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate’ for published articles. At Figshare, we’ve taken note of the growling argument around the moral and ethical responsibilities of sharing research data, and have built a platform to help researchers get credit for making their research available.

An ever-growing list of why researchers should practice open science is listed on Quora. Similarly, the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) makes the case for research data management in their briefing paper to help managers in research institutions build support for developing new services for research data management.

Furthermore, making your research (data) available allows you to:

Trust your own data and allow others to do the same by giving them the resources to check and verify your published work
Tailor the way you use Figshare to suit your needs, such as using the free private storage to simply manage your data and share private links with reviewers.
Use Figshare seamlessly integrates with other tools such as Github and so figshare can be used to make the data persistent. Therefore, you own your data and you control how it is shared – we give you full autonomy.
Showcase your data with slides and posters that are easy to share and download or quick to view within the figshare browser.
Securely store and back up data and metadata using a robust, reliable cloud based infrastructure (in Figshare’s case, AWS S3). With many funders now making it a requirement to keep your data, Figshare provides a safe environment to do so.

To read how others have used Figshare we created a collection of Figshare case studies for different disciplines.

What can I upload to Figshare?

Anything academic. You can upload all of your research outputs to Figshare. When you make your research outputs publicly available, you can choose the type of research that you are sharing. See the list of current item types to get an idea of what others are sharing. Figshare previews over 1,200 file type extensions in the browser and a full list of supported extensions available in these user guides.

When you publish on Figshare your data is given a DOI to help you track the attention, reuse ((citations, references, etc.), and potential impact of your research.

What is a DOI?

DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier and is a type of persistent identifier (PID). As the name suggests these are persistent and so provide a permanent link to your research, even if the URL where your item ‘lives’ changes. For example, if Figshare modifies the structure of item URLs to adapt to new web standards, it will update the DOI registry with the new URLs. Anyone who finds a citation/reference for your work using the DOI will be able to click the DOI and be taken to your work even though the URL changed. If someone cited your work using the old URL, they could see a 404 error depending on if redirects are in place. So, always use your DOI, and encourage other to do the same, to reference your work!

Figshare is a DataCite node and so items published on Figshare are issued DataCite DOIs. This means the metadata you enter is searchable in DataCite’s global search interface: https://commons.datacite.org/

In order to meet with DataCite metadata requirements, Figshare requires users to add the following information before making files public and citable: Title, author list (ordered), categories (set ontology), tags (free text) and a description with as much context as needed to interpret the files. Users can also add links to other digital objects. Institutional clients can define additional custom metadata when implementing Figshare and can map these fields to DataCite fields. Importantly, the DOI cannot be deleted but the item can be modified post-publication, triggering a new version.

Best practice for managing your outputs on Figshare

Figshare is a place to store, share, and cite your research outputs. Research outputs can include, but are not limited to, tabular data, images, video, presentations, posters, code, book chapters, and more.

Does all of this seem like a lot of extra work? It’ll save you so much time in the long-run and give you peace of mind knowing that you’ve covered all the bases necessary to ensure that your data is re-used appropriately! Remember, really reusable data gets you increased citations – if others can’t understand it, they can’t re-use it, and they won’t cite it.

Things to consider before conducting your research

Data Management Plans (DMPs) are increasingly becoming a part of Research Data Management Policies within institutions and requested in grant application by funders. Depending on the research field, some of the things you’ll need to include are ethics, consent, how and when you’ll share your data and long term preservation.

If you are unsure as to whether you need to create a DMP before starting a research project check with a research data manager – we’d recommend checking your institutions website and library services for more details.

Even if you are not required to do so, creating a DMP or planning just some of its components can still be useful. For more information please visit https://dmponline.dcc.ac.uk/. Another tool for DMPs is DMPTool; their funder templates helpful for complying with funder mandates around data management.

We have provided some guidance and links below to help you get started.

Ethical obligations

It is important to check that you have the right to publish your data openly. For more information see:

Copyright

Useful questions to consider:

Have you established who owns the copyright in your data? Might there be joint copyright?
Have you considered what kind of license is appropriate for sharing your data and what, if any, restrictions there might be on re-use?
If you are purchasing or re-using someone else’s data sources have you considered how that data might be shareable, for example negotiating a new licence with the original supplier?

For more information on licenses, see the section in this user guide.

Suggested Checklist:

Check consent (see above)
Check licence or license 🙂
Credit the authors of any data reused in your dataset, according to the original license
Ensure that any and all sensitive or private information (e.g. human-subjects, rare and endangered species) has been anonymised / de-identified (or separated and uploaded as metadata-only / confidential)
Ensure that any data pending commercial processes is only published in accordance with the contract or agreement with a commercial partner (e.g. an embargo may be necessary, or you may be required to publish commercial data confidentially)

Things to consider when you’re ready to share your research

Make the most out of your metadata. Metadata is (are) the information about your outputs on Figshare. This includes title, author, categories, keywords, description, and more. The more information you include in your metadata, the more likely it is your research will be found by others and the more likely it is that they will be able to reuse and cite your work.

Make your research outputs FAIR. Research outputs that are FAIR are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. More on FAIR can be found on GO-FAIR’s website and more on Figshare and FAIR is found in the FAQ section of this guide. Also see this infographic on increasing your research’s exposure on Figshare using the FAIR data principles.

How to make your outputs as FAIR as possible:

Name your files and folders consistently:
- Choose a naming convention and stick to it
- Avoid punctuation, special characters, and capitalization
- Don’t use full-stops or spaces
- Keep names relevant but as short as possible
Ensure that your outputs include all files, code, and anything else that is necessary in order for another person to recreate your analysis, or validate your results
Ensure that your outputs are published with descriptive metadata (information describing your data):
- Fill in the basic metadata fields during upload as thoroughly as possible.
- Choose an appropriate, descriptive, but concise title for your dataset.
- Make use of the “Description” field to describe your data in as much detail as possible.
- Make use of the “Related materials” section to link to any papers, publications, or other outputs that your output informs, is informed by, or is related to.
- Add as many keywords as possible but keep them relevant and consistent.
Include a README file in your upload that contains all the necessary information to enable somebody else to understand your outputs, re-create your results, and/or reuse it ethically. Consider including:
- Information about the research project and all collaborators
- Author’s contact details
- Description of the research process (steps taken to collect, create, and analyse the data)
- Description of the intended and unintended uses of the data (especially NB for data collected on human subjects)
- List of files contained within the dataset alongside a description of each file (see DCC’s list of disciplinary metadata standards)
- Description of all hardware and software required to run the files, as well as open source alternatives for proprietary items, where necessary
- Description of any code created and/or used to process the files
- Reference list of any files reused from other sources (with links to sources)
- For more information on README files, see 4TU’s and Cornell University’s guidance.
Choose an appropriate license that allows your data to be published as openly as possible, but to be reused as intended
Convert proprietary files to open formats whenever possible and upload them along with the original files (your institution might have file format recommendations that you should follow). UK Data Service’ recommended file formats. When formatting and organizing the files, consider the following:
- The recommended file formats (your institution might have file format recommendations that you should follow)
- Open formats (Readme, CSV)
- Project versus fileset (a Figshare item with multiple files) versus Collection

Is publishing in Figshare considered pre-publication?

If your research is publicly funded then you may in fact be obliged to make all of your data available as terms of your grant. You must cite other people who have contributed to figures where necessary.

Most publishers (>90% including all major publishers) do not consider sharing your research outputs on online platforms as prior publication.

Please be aware that publishing already published articles is not allowed as these already have a DOI assigned, please see figshare’s policy.

If you are still unsure and wish to upload a version of the published paper or part of it, you should review the publisher’s copyright policies or get in contact with them.